Cyber crisis management: a strategic lever for managers – Cadre & Dirigeants

Cyber crisis management: a strategic lever for managers

In the French entrepreneurial landscape, few leaders dare to recognize their limits. Here, uncertainty worries, failure disturbs. Conversely, Anglo-Saxon cultures value risk-taking as a driver of innovation, and consider failure as an essential step in learning. Winston Churchill summed up this philosophy in a phrase that has become famous: “Success is to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

Accepting risk, understanding it and integrating it into your strategy means not only preparing for uncertainty, but also creating the conditions for sustainable innovation.
Cybersecurity is a perfect example of this dynamic: organizations are investing heavily in defensive solutions, with an obsession – often implicit – with completely eliminating the risk of attack. This responsibility rests mainly on the shoulders of the CISO, sometimes accompanied by the IT department, who multiplies the tools to close technical gaps. This defensive approach is necessary. But it remains insufficient.

The myth of zero risk: a strategic trap

We know that there is no such thing as zero risk in cybersecurity.
Preparing for it only through prevention is tantamount to ignoring the reality of the attacks. And when the incident occurs – because it will happen sooner or later – companies that have bet everything on defense find themselves paralyzed, ill-prepared to deal with the emergency, with often lasting impacts.

As Napoleon said: “To be beaten is excusable, to be surprised is unforgivable.” This principle fully applies to cybersecurity: the real failure is not being attacked, but not having been able to manage the crisis.
On the contrary, acknowledging one’s vulnerability means demonstrating strategic lucidity. However, suffering a cyberattack is still widely perceived as a failure to be concealed. This stance is not only incompatible with regulatory obligations and societal expectations, but it aggravates the crisis.

From risk to lever of transformation

Treating cyber risk as a simple danger to be avoided is to miss its potential. When anticipated, understood and integrated, it becomes a factor for continuous improvement. A leader who recognizes that he cannot control everything paves the way for a more authentic, more human leadership. It values collaboration, initiative and collective learning.
Preparing your organization for cyber crisis management also means uniting your teams around a common goal. It means strengthening cohesion, developing resilience, and bringing about a culture of shared responsibility.

Effective cyber crisis management: the fundamentals

Reacting effectively to a cyber crisis requires appropriate governance.
Crisis management is not only the responsibility of the IT department: it concerns all the key functions of the company – general management, communication, human resources, finance, legal, DPO, etc. Everyone must be mobilized in the crisis cell. Next, you need to have a structured cyber crisis management plan (CMM), describing:

• Governance arrangements (constitution of the unit, decision-making process, regulatory declarations),
• Scenarios of degraded operation (network interruption, teleworking, etc.),
• Communication strategies (internal and external),
• As well as technical remediation actions (restoration, investigation, business continuity).

Finally, the effectiveness of this system is based on regular training: testing, simulating, correcting, to adapt to a constantly changing risk.

Accept to act better

Faced with a cyberattack, only a rapid, coordinated and human response can limit the impact. This presupposes a full and complete acceptance of cyber risk as a business risk in its own right, on a par with any other strategic factor.

By integrating cyber crisis management into its governance, the company is not only protecting itself: it is strengthening its collective, clarifying its processes, and bringing out more responsible leadership.

So, managers: are you ready to make cyber risk a lever for transformation for your company?

Article written by Stéphanie Ledoux for Cadres & Dirigeants.